Conservatives and other opponents in Congress of the president's health care law, passed in 2010, have been eager for a new chance to publicly record their opposition to it. Cantor had been promising his caucus a vote in the near future and Wednesday's news was the most detailed timing yet.

It will be the first time the current 113th Congress votes on whether to repeal the law, but far from the first time the move has been made in Congress' history. Dozens of votes have been taken since the law's passage to repeal the law in whole or in part. Those efforts have been unsuccessful.

And in June, the Supreme Court upheld the signature health care law's individual insurance mandate, upending speculation after hostile-seeming oral arguments in March that the justices would overturn the law.

Even if the Republican-controlled House votes to repeal the law, efforts to do so will die in the Democratic-controlled Senate. But it would allow freshmen who have never before voted on the law to publicly record their opposition.